1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a movement pattern recognizing apparatus using, for example, an infrared array sensor for detecting movement directions of human bodies and the number of persons who have passed through a doorway or the like and further relates to an apparatus for detecting movements of human bodies and an apparatus for detecting the number of passed persons.
2. Related Art of the Invention
In recent years, security, control of air conditioning and illumination control have been required to measure a state where human beings existing in a room and temperature distribution in the same in order to detect whether a human being exists in the room and the amount of activities in the room. Moreover, companies and the like are required to perform control of persons who exist in a room so as to recognize and control the number of persons who have entered the room or a building and those who have left the same.
As a conventional method of controlling the persons who exist in a room, there has been a method in which the name is written at a reception of a building or a room, a method in which counting is performed by a manual counter at a doorway of the room, and a method in which the persons are, one by one, mechanically allowed to enter or leave the room to perform counting.
Moreover, methods, disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 3-196286 and 5-324955, can be available in each of which pressure sensors are disposed in mats at the doorway, stairs or the like to detect the number of persons and the directions of movements. As disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 3-186998, 4-95794 and 5-81503, apparatuses have been employed in which a plurality of infrared sensors are used to count the movement directions and the number of persons. That is, the weight of the human body is detected to detect the human body so that the movement direction and the number of persons who have passed are detected, or infrared rays or the like radiated from the human body are detected so that the human body is detected. Then, a detection signal is used to control an environment control unit, such as an air conditioner or an illumination apparatus, or a security system. To count the number of persons who have entered and left the room, an apparatus using an infrared sensor to detect an infrared ray generating source has been used.
To solve the foregoing problems, a sensor for detecting the number of persons who have passed the sensor and a system having the sensor has been disclosed by an applicant of the present invention which comprises one infrared sensor having a plurality of detection portions to detect the movement directions of human bodies who have passed the. sensor and the number of persons who have passed the sensor so as to control the number of persons in a room.
However, in the case where the number of persons is counted manually, a large cost and a complicated operation are required. Thus, there arises a problem in that labor and time cannot be saved.
The mechanical detection method requires a large scale facility, the cost of which cannot be reduced. What is worse, the method suffers from an excessively large space being required for installation.
Since the method using the plural infrared sensors to detect the human bodies comprises the plural sensors, the cost cannot be reduced. What is worse, since whether or not all of the doorways are detected cannot be recognized, errors frequently occur in detection. Thus, there arises a problem in that the number of persons cannot accurately be counted. In particular, if persons continuously move while being somewhat apart from one another, or if persons overlap during movement, detection using sensors encounters errors in the detection and in determination. Thus, the method suffers from a problem in that the human bodies cannot be accurately detected. Although the foregoing methods are required to be provided with corresponding adaptable signal processing methods and algorithms, no method and algorithm have been disclosed.
In view of the foregoing, an object of the present invention is to provide a movement pattern recognizing apparatus capable of detecting directions of mobile bodies, calculating the number of movements in each direction and recognizing the movement patterns.
Meanwhile , detection of the accurate number of persons who have passed a wide doorway of a department store, an exhibition, a pavilion of an exhibition, an art museum, a museum having a width of 1 m or larger cannot easily be performed.
Then in order to solve the above problem experienced with the conventional art for detecting the human bodies, another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for detecting movements of human bodies and an apparatus for detecting the number of passed persons, which is capable of easily, accurately and reliably detecting human bodies or the number of passed persons with a low cost and accurately detecting the number of passed persons through a wide doorway.
According to the present invention, there is provided a movement pattern recognizing apparatus comprising: movement signal detection means using a sensor for detecting existence of a mobile body to detect, in a detection region in which the mobile body which can be detected by the sensor moves, a movement signal indicating the position of the mobile body which changes as the time elapses; movement pattern storage means for storing data about previously formed various movement patterns which are realized when the mobile body moves in the detection region; and movement pattern selection means for selecting data about the movement pattern, corresponding to the movement signal detected by the movement signal detection means, from the movement pattern storage means.
The mobile body according to the present invention is a mobile heat generating body, the sensor is a converging lens for converging infrared rays into a predetermined angle and an infrared array sensor having a plurality of detection portions for detecting the infrared rays converged by the converging lens, and the detection region is a region into which the infrared rays are converged.
According to the present invention, there is provided a movement pattern recognizing apparatus comprising: movement signal detection means using a converging lens for converging infrared rays into a predetermined angle and an infrared array sensor having a plurality of detection portions for detecting the infrared rays converged by the converging lens to detect a movement signal indicating the position of a heat generating body which changes as the time elapses when the heat generating body moves in a detection region into which the infrared rays are converged; movement signal normalizing means for generating normalized data of the movement signal detected by the movement signal detection means; movement pattern storage means for storing data about various movement patterns previously generated in consideration of the normalized data generated by the movement signal normalizing means and realized when the heat generating body moves in the detection region; movement pattern selection means for selecting, from the movement pattern storage means, the data about the movement pattern that corresponds to the normalized data generated by the movement signal normalizing means; and movement pattern recognizing means for recognizing the movement pattern of the heat generating body in accordance with the data selected by the movement pattern selection means.
The movement signal detection means according to the present invention may have a plurality of sets each consisting of the converging lens and the infrared array sensor, and a predetermined region, in which the heat generating body moves, may be covered by each of the plural sets.
The present invention may comprise refuse data storage means for storing a plurality of refuse data items which are data items that cannot be generated by the movement signal normalizing means, wherein the movement signal normalizing means may generate normalized data of the movement signal detected by the movement signal detection means, and may delete refuse data from the normalized data if refuse data stored in the refuse data storage means is contained in the normalized data.
The present invention may have a structure comprising reference temperature storage means for storing reference data about a predetermined reference temperature, wherein the movement signal normalizing means uses the reference data stored in the reference temperature storage means to obtain the ratio of or the difference between signals obtainable from the plural detection portions of the infrared array sensor, and compares the ratio or the magnitude of the difference between the detection portions and detection portions adjacent to the detection portions to perform a binary-coding process so as to generate normalized data of the movement signal. The predetermined reference temperature may be a temperature which is detected by the movement signal detection means in a case where the heat generating body does not exist in the detection region, and the reference data may be a mean value and a standard deviation of the reference temperature calculated by using the reference temperature obtained by sampling performed for a predetermined time.
The present invention may have a structure such that the data about the movement patterns stored in the movement pattern storage means has sub-information about movement directions of the movement patterns and/or the number of passage times in the movement directions, and the movement pattern recognizing means recognizes the movement direction and/or the number of passage times in the movement direction about the movement pattern of the heat generating body in accordance with the data about the movement pattern selected by the movement pattern selection means.
In the present invention, the movement signal detection means uses the sensor for detecting existence of a mobile body to detect, in the detection region in which the mobile body which can be detected by the sensor moves, the movement signal indicating the position of the mobile body which changes as the time elapses. The movement pattern storage means stores data about various movement patterns realized when the mobile body moves in the detection region. The data about the various movement patterns has been previously generated. The movement pattern selection means selects the data about the movement pattern, corresponding to the movement signal detected by the movement signal detection means, from the movement pattern storage means.
In the present invention, the movement signal detection means uses the converging lens for converging infrared rays into a predetermined angle and the infrared array sensor having the plural detection portions for detecting the infrared rays converged by the converging lens to detect the movement signal indicating the position of the heat generating body which changes as the time elapses when the heat generating body moves in the detection region into which the infrared rays are converged. The movement signal normalizing means generates normalized data of the movement signal detected by the movement signal detection means. The movement pattern storage means stores the data about the various movement patterns previously generated in consideration of the normalized data generated by the movement signal normalizing means and realized when the heat generating body moves in the detection region. The movement pattern selection means selects, from the movement pattern storage means, the data about the movement pattern that corresponds to the normalized data generated by the movement signal normalizing means. The movement pattern recognizing means recognizes the movement pattern of the heat generating body in accordance with the data selected by the movement pattern selection means.
The movement signal detection means according to the present invention may have a plurality of sets each consisting of the converging lens and the infrared array sensor, and a predetermined region, in which the heat generating body moves, may be covered by each of the plural sets.
The present invention may have the structure such that the refuse data storage means stores a plurality of refuse data items which are data items that cannot be generated by the movement signal normalizing means, and the movement signal normalizing means generates normalized data of the movement signal detected by the movement signal detection means, and deletes refuse data from the normalized data if refuse data stored in the refuse data storage means is contained in the normalized data.
The present invention may have a structure such that the reference temperature storage means stores reference data about the predetermined reference temperature, and the movement signal normalizing means uses the reference data stored in the reference temperature storage means to obtain the ratio of or the difference between signals obtainable from the plural detection portions of the infrared array sensor, and compares the ratio or the magnitude of the difference between the detection portions and detection portions adjacent to the detection portions to perform a binary-coding process so as to generate normalized data of the movement signal. The predetermined reference temperature is the temperature which is detected by the movement signal detection means in the case where the heat generating body does not exist in the detection region, and the reference data is the mean value and the standard deviation of the reference temperature calculated by using the reference temperature obtained by sampling performed for a predetermined time.
The present invention may have a structure such that the data about the movement patterns stored in the movement pattern storage means has sub-information about movement directions of the movement patterns and/or the number of passage times in the movement directions, and the movement pattern recognizing means recognizes the movement direction and/or the number of passage times in the movement direction about the movement pattern of the heat generating body in accordance with the data about the movement pattern selected by the movement pattern selection means.
Further according to another present invention, there is provided an apparatus for detecting movements of human bodies comprising: an infrared array sensor having a plurality of devices arranged in a direction in which human beings move; signal change detection means for detecting change in the leading edge and/or trailing edge of each of output signals from each of the devices of the infrared array sensor occurring in a predetermined period of time; and determining means using a predetermined rule to, in accordance with a detected value obtained from each of the devices of the infrared array sensor, determine movements of human bodies in an area which is the subject of the infrared array sensor.
Therefore, the apparatus for detecting movements of human bodies is operated to detect and determine the persons who have entered the room or the building or those who have left the same so as to count the number of the persons who have passed the detection area so that the number of the attendance or the number of persons who exist in the room is accurately detected. In particular, when a threshold is set by using the temperature of the floor surface always observed by the infrared array sensor, change in the temperature of the floor surface can always be fed back. Thus, the threshold can be caused to follow the change in the temperature of the floor surface. Since upper and lower limit thresholds are set with respect to a reference value, a low-temperature object, the temperature of which is low, can be detected. By monitoring the inclination of the outputs from the sensor, that is, the amount of change and by inputting a value (a maximum value-1) to each of devices except a device at which the largest number of persons has been detected, the number of persons who have successively passed the detection area and the number of persons who intersect at the passage can further accurately be detected. By multiplying the output values from the adjacent devices by the ratio of crosstalk to correct the output from the sensors or by forcibly determining the human bodies in two or less steps between steps in which human bodies have been determined, the human bodies can accurately be detected even if low temperature or high temperature objects exist mixedly. Thus, the moving directions and the number of the passed persons can accurately be detected.
By combining a software which is the processing method and a pyroelectric device with each other, an accurate and reliable sensor system for detecting the number of passed persons and exhibiting a reduced size and cost of the system can be obtained. Thus, the number of persons existing in the room can easily and immediately be detected. In particular, by using the foregoing detection apparatus and the sensor system, an error in detection, as has been experienced with a structure having a plurality of sensors, can be prevented. As a result, the human bodies and the number of passed persons can accurately and reliably be detected.
According to the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for detecting movements of human bodies comprising: a plurality of infrared array sensors having a plurality of devices arranged in a direction in which human beings move; signal change detection means for detecting change in the leading edge and/or trailing edge of each of output signals from each of the devices of each of the infrared arrays occurring in a predetermined period of time; and determining means using a predetermined rule to, in accordance with a state of appearance of the detected value of each of the devices of each of the infrared arrays between the infrared arrays, determine movements of human bodies in an area which is the subject of the plural infrared arrays.
Therefore, by determining the state of appearance of the detected values detected by the plural infrared array sensors in terms of the time and spatially, the human beings and the number of passed persons through a wide doorway can accurately be detected.